Playing Pilgrim
by paperbkryter
Summary: Thanksgiving - Winchester style. Never let a teenaged boy even THINK about cooking a turkey. Spoilers to current,nothing too specific.


I started writing this two Thanksgivings ago just for fun, and have been pecking (ha ha!) at it ever since. I finished it up a few days ago, and spent some time debating whether I should share or not.

_When the Levee Breaks_ made my decision for me.

I think we could all use a little dose of whimsy right now.

*****

John Winchester knew that as the father of two young boys he should expect some trouble now and again. Boys will be boys, and teenaged rebellion was just a fact of life. Hell, he'd lied about his age and run off to join the Marines when he'd been a kid. If the worst thing Dean did was stay out all night to attend 24 hour horror movie marathons, and Sam threw temper tantrums over playing sports, then he counted himself lucky.

The year Sam turned fifteen, and Dean's lady killer reputation was still in the early stages of formation, John _was_ counting himself lucky. Sammy was too busy dealing with the sudden onset of puberty to be much of a problem. Dean, between keeping an eye on his rebellious younger brother and going Hunting with John, was just too busy to cause much trouble. Things had been rather quiet at home, therefore John was truly surprised when he arrived back at their tiny rent-by-the-week apartment one November evening to find the place in utter disarray.

There was a live turkey in the living room.

Ghosts, demons and things that went bump in the night Mr. Winchester could handle. The appearance of a rather beraggled turkey in his living room set him back a little bit. In fact, he ducked out of the apartment to make sure he was in _his_ apartment. Upon discovering he was correct and there was still a turkey in his living room, John could only stand in the doorway and stare.

The turkey was missing several feathers and one leg. It had made a mess all over the sofa where it had finally come to roost, but apparently it had previously been going wild all over the apartment judging by the drips, drops and smears of blood decorating the carpet, the linoleum and the walls. As John watched, the poor bird rolled one beady eye up at him and keeled over off the edge of the couch onto the floor with its sole remaining leg curled up to its plump breast.

Done in by blood loss no doubt.

John cautiously made his way into the kitchen. First to catch his attention was the turkey's missing limb, sticking up from the garbage disposal claws first as if some creature were trying to crawl up out of the sink. The second thing he noticed was an ungodly mess.

Breadcrumbs and dried potato flakes were flung all around as if a pantry had exploded, adhereing to the counters, the cupboards and spreading out across the floor. The floor, John noted, was sticky with blood and something gelatinous he suspected might have been cranberry sauce. A series of small holes peppered the floor and some of the cupboards, holes that appeared to have been made by a shotgun. The gun was nowhere to be seen. There was only a broken broom.

Most tellingly there was a skidmark through the mess bearing a suspicious resemblance to a skidmark that might have been left by one of Sam Winchester's sneakers.

"What the....? Sam! Dean!"

There was no answer save for one last dying gasp from the turkey.

After a minute of head scratching, John noticed something stuck up on the fridge. It was a piece of notebook paper, fringes intact from where it was torn from a spiral bound notebook. Said piece of paper was smeared with fingerprints in both blood and cranberry sauce. The horrendous handwriting comprising the note was that of his youngest. That Sam had written the note did not bode well.

The one thing John could always count on was Dean's ability to take charge of things (read: Sam) while he was away. When Sam got stubborn on John, Dean could always work out the kinks and get little brother to behave himself. Dean took being Sam's surrogate mother/father very seriously and there was never any trouble on his watch. If notes were to be written, Dean wrote them. Blessed be, because Dean had impeccable handwriting.

Sam did not.

He wrote:

_Hal acid out. Gumshoe hobo bong. Lunar got father Tobey. _

Which John eventually translated to:

_Had an accident. Gone to hospital. Look out for the turkey._

Head in one hand, note in the other, John made his way through the wrecked living room, past the deceased bird, and back out the front door. If anyone had been within earshot they would have heard him muttering both curses and admonishments to his late wife regarding "her" children.

*********

The first words out of Sam's mouth were: "It's all Dean's fault."

John more or less expected this excuse as he'd heard many variations of it from both boys over the years. Whether it was Dean's fault or Sam's fault depended on who was being asked and invariably it was whoever _wasn't_ being asked that got the blame. As he sat down in the plastic hospital waiting-room chair next to Sam, John demanded an explanation. Sam hesitantly began to give him one, and soon the tale was tumbling forth in all it's sordid details.

The day started out with Dean experiencing an epiphany - or so he claimed - and not in so many words considering he had no idea what "epiphany" meant. Instead of the usual Winchester Thanksgiving of hitting the buffet line at the local Homestyle Cafe, Dean decided he would _cook_ the family Thanksgiving dinner. Paramount to this task was going shopping, therefore he had to wake up his brother because unlike Dean, Sam didn't blow all his money the moment he got hold of some.

Waking Sam proved to be a bit of a challenge. Sam was busy dreaming about the end of the world - literally. He was dreaming he was leading an expedition of tuxedo wearing dwarves to the South Pole. Halfway through the dream he realized two things: 1) the dwarves were not really dwarves, but penguins wearing tall pointy hats and 2) he was barefoot. Analyzing the presence of penguins in tall pointy hats would involve intense research, but he knew why he was dreaming his feet were cold.

At twelve Sam had gone through a cute, pudgy stage. Whereas it could be argued that he remained cute, he'd lost the baby fat during years thirteen and fourteen and could no longer be called "pudgy." From there, however, his body stubbornly refused to enter puberty in a timely manner, condemning him to be described as "petite," and forcing him on more than one occasion to beat the snot out of those boys who thought they could bully him because of his size. (He started high school wondering if he shouldn't ditch any and all other career plans to run off and become a jockey, and considered it half seriously until he discovered he was deathly allergic to horses.)

Luckily, (or unluckily depending on your POV) over the course of a single summer Sam experienced a growth spurt of monumental proportions, which rendered him very tall, very thin, and what one might call "coltish" - which translated to "klutzy." In any case the immediate result of his sudden increase in height (aside from the need to purchase a whole new wardrobe) was that his feet would hang over the edge of the small twin-sized bed in which he now slept. This often led to cold feet and dreams about arctic expeditions.

Thanksgiving morning, after fending off Dean's shaking and poking and yelling with grunts and repeated groans of "go'way" Sam found his feet not only cold but _stinging_ from where Dean smacked the hell out of them with the broadside of the A thru D volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

"OW!!!"

Sam was not at all happy to be roused out of bed at the crack of dawn during a non-school day, especially by having the bottoms of his feet smacked by a brother who should not have been awake at the crack of dawn himself. Dean was a notoriously late sleeper. Of course what Sam didn't know was that Dean just hadn't been to sleep at all having been out all night tom-catting with a girl he met during a midnight trip to the 7-11 for beef jerky. She'd just been getting off shift with a case of beer tucked under one arm and he'd followed her home to help her drink it. If he'd entertained the notion that he might have gotten to home plate with her he should have confiscated the beer. Bases were loaded but so was she and she passed out before Dean could score.

It could be said that Dean's epiphany might have been due to the fact he was still slightly drunk when it occurred to him.

Although he was not at all happy, Sam did count himself lucky that all he got was book-smacked considering what he'd done not a week before during a clandestine prank war. The prank war was clandestine because of what happened after the preceding prank war wherein Dean's idea to rig the showerhead with blue dye backfired. A royally pissed (and royal blue) John had declared pranking a punishable offense. He'd already been mad about the dye but after overhearing Sam's comment: "Blue just isn't Dad's color," followed by Dean's burst of laughter, he'd had enough.

Sam's latest offence was that he had resurrected the tried and true "hand in a bowl of warm water" trick while the three of them had been out of town on a Hunt. Unfortunately he hadn't thought his plan through very well. He should have waited until they were back home. Out on the road the boys had been been forced to bunk together and upon waking up feeling rather damp, Dean promptly foisted all blame off onto his pubescent brother, making specific, and totally fabricated, hints regarding the source of the wet spot in their bed. This lead to an "it's perfectly normal" speech from John during which Sam blushed so hard he thought his ears were going to spontaneously combust while Dean sat in the background giggling as if he _hadn't _peed the bed.

Getting Sam out of bed was one thing, getting him to go along with Dean's plan and parting with his money to _pay_ for Dean's plan, took a little more convincing. Blackmail proved ineffective since Dean didn't have anything particularly incriminating he could use, and whining only begot facetious mockery. Threats of bodily harm wouldn't do him any good either as Sam would most definitely fight back and Dean would have to hurt him - which would render him useless to help with the shopping.

That left bribery.

"I'll let you drive my car."

"Seriously?" Sam's eyebrows went up, and so did his voice, which was still bouncing around like Speedy Gonzales on Meth trying to decide where it wanted wanted to stay when puberty was said and done.

(When puberty _was_ said and done, it could be argued that Sam's voice never did make up its mind. He had an incredible vocal range that stretched all the way from a high-pitched falsetto shriek to a low Barry White-esq. rumble. Aside from the fact his Latin was better, this was why Dean always made Sam perform their exorcisms. Sam just flat-out sounded better.)

Dean sighed. "Seriously."

If, dear reader, the above mentioned car had been the Impala, Dean would have never agreed to let his fifteen-year-old unlicensed brother get behind the wheel, but at this time the classic Chevy was still safely in the hands of their father. They were not, then, talking about the Impala, but Dean's _first_ car.

The year before Dean had put in a whole summer working at Bobby Singer's salvage yard in exchange for a car of his own. He'd had his eye on a Camaro he'd spotted out in the yard, but the Camaro ended up having a seriously blown engine (and a family of mice living in the air cleaner) so he was forced to choose something else. Taking the lesser of many evils he chose a 1984 green (and rust) Chevy Chevette.

The "Vette" as Sam jokingly called the little hatchback, resembled a semi-rotten lime. It burned oil like nobody's business and none of the windows would open. In the summertime driving the Vette was like driving around your own personal sauna but without the health benefits; in fact, it was probably quite toxic. The interior smelled like a combination of mildew and something dead. Dean had hanging from the rear view mirror about a dozen cardboard air fresheners shaped like cherries but the death smell usually overwhelmed them. Every now and again though, one could get a whiff of cherry, as if whatever had died in the car had done so by drowning in a vat of Kool-Aid.

None of this, however, stopped Sam from being jealous. He wanted to learn to drive, and he wanted a car, primarily so he could get out from under his suffocatingly overprotective family. If anyone had asked Sam Winchester what he wanted to be when he grew up, he would have promptly replied: "Free!"

"This weekend we'll head out of town and I'll teach you how to drive," Dean said, tantalizingly dangling the Vette's keys in front of his little brother's nose. "Okay?"

That was enough for Sam. "Okay."

Within the hour the two boys were crammed into the stinky little car and on their way to the grocery store. Over the loud rattle of the engine, Dean sang "Over the River and Through the Woods" until Sam threatened to kill him if he didn't stop.

There was one problem with Dean's plan, as they found out once they hit the one grocery store in the county that was still open. Sam's twenty odd dollars covered everything they'd need _except_ for the main course. Of course Dean had a solution for this too. Much to Sam's surprise it did not involve shoplifting.

"We're hunters," Dean said. "We'll just go get a turkey ourselves."

Sam gaped at him. "What?"

"We have guns."

"We're not that kind of hunters, Dean!" Sam dumped the bag of groceries into the Vette's back end and slammed the hatch, triggering a shower of rust that fell to the pavement like dirty snow. "We use rock salt and holy water. You can't kill a turkey with rock salt."

"There is real ammo in Dad's locker."

"Dad's _lock-_er. Dad's locker is locked for a reason."

Dean grinned and produced a paper clip from the depths of his pocket.

"Dad," Sam said succinctly. "Will kill you."

"Not after the delicious turkey dinner he's gonna get." Dean's grin widened. "Get in the car. We've got to get the bird and get it in the oven in a hurry or we'll be eating Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow."

Right then Sam decided his brother was most definitely still drunk. His first inclination was to go home and lock himself in his bedroom until Christmas, as that was probably the safest thing to do. However, the visual of his semi-drunk, high-on-the-holiday brother running through the woods trying to hunt down a turkey, was so seriously giggle inducing, Sam couldn't resist.

"Fine," he said. "Let's go."

After a brief stop at the apartment to get weapons, ammunition, and several cans of motor oil to keep the Vette happy, the boys were on their way out of town. It didn't take long before they left behind the hustle and bustle of Upper Sandusky, Ohio for the quiet serenity of the nearby countryside. They also left behind a trail of thick black smoke and a lot of noise as Dean's car protested the new mileage he was forcing upon it.

"Turkey? What turkey?" Sam yelled over the screech of the Vette's muffler bottoming out. "We've scared away everything within a hundred miles!"

Dean ignored him. Truth be told, neither of them had absolutely any idea how to hunt animals. Ghosts were easier. They showed up, you shot them. Animals were much more elusive and did not tend to seek people out like ghosts did. You never saw a deer get into a family's house and lurk around some kid's bedroom moaning and rattling chains. The closest either of the Winchester brothers had ever gotten to a wild animal was the time their father shot a werewolf, and they'd been rather disillusioned to discover it did not look like either a real wolf or the werewolves they'd seen on television.

"What?" John had asked upon seeing their pouty expressions. "You were expecting Michael Landon?"

(Many years later Dean would realize Michael Landon had seriously damaged not just his image of werewolves, but also frontiersmen and angels. Dean's Michael Landon angst was such that it would induce a certain member of God's angelic army to watch all five seasons of _Highway to Heaven _and afterward conclude that Dean Winchester needed more help than originally thought.)

The further they drove, the more Sam realized Dean was stalling, and just didn't want to admit that he had no clue where or how they were going to get a turkey. He would have brought this up had he not suddenly been thrown into the dashboard so hard his head thumped soundly off the windshield with a loud "CRACK!"

Sam flopped back into his seat, quite dazed from the blow. If he'd been in a Warner Brother's cartoon he might have seen little turkeys flying around his head. There were no turkeys but he did see stars. The revelation that you really saw stars if you got brained real good wasn't much of a surprise. Just the year before, on a Hunt, Sam had been knocked silly when a poltergeist lobbed a dump-truck at him. It was a toy dump truck, but it was quite solidly made and put a dent in his forehead. He'd seen stars then too.

(In a "many years later" note for Sam: after a rather nasty encounter with the pissed-off ghost of FBI Agent Victor Hendricksen in a gas station bathroom - in which Sam's forehead got up close and personal with the edge of a urinal - he made a tally of all the times he'd nearly had his brains bashed in since the age of nine and declared he would be investing in a crash helmet. This announcement resulted in two things: 1) a heated argument with Dean as to whether or not he needed to go to the hospital and 2) Dean's rather catty remark about the size of Sam's head making it an easy target. Sam's next declaration involved a Taser, his brother's nether regions, and a return trip to Hell. Dean, with a wide-eyed and perfectly innocent expression, responded with: "Head wounds make you cranky.")

That cranial damage made Sam cranky was quite true. He bounced off the windshield and upon recovering from being quite literally star struck, he turned to Dean and yelled. "Dammit, Dean! What the fudge?!?!"

Only he didn't say "fudge."

Dean was more concerned about the crack in the Vette's windshield. "Dude! You broke my car!"

"Asshole, your car broke my freakin' head!" Sam pointed to the cut over his eyebrow which was oozing blood. He did not actually say "freakin'" either.

Dean's face screwed up in a frown. "You better stop cussing. You let fly with that in front of Dad and he'll pop you in the mouth." He was, Sam noted, quite distressed by hearing baby brother spewing expletives, which was fine with Sam because he got rather sick of being treated as if he were still two and not yet potty trained.

He curbed the cussing however, and wiped his head on his sleeve with a growl. "What'd you stop for?"

Putting the Vette back in motion to turn down a side road, Dean pointed to the hand-painted wooden sign stuck in the ground at the corner of the main road and dirt track they now traversed. The sign read: _"Fresh Turkeys."_

Sam scowled. "That's a farm, Dean."

"I know that, dork."

"Farmers don't give away free turkeys any more than grocery stores do, especially on Thanksgiving." Wincing, as the road was bumpy and the springs on the Vette were iffy at best, Sam couldn't resist adding. "Besides, I thought you wanted to play great white hunter and shoot one yourself."

"Only if I have to," Dean replied. "Look. Why wouldn't they give up just one little turkey for us? They've got a bazillion."

Sam looked. A bazillion might have been an accurate count of the turkeys milling around in several large wire enclosures at the back of the property. There were so many of the big white birds it looked like the pens were filled with mounds of snow – snow that was moving and making a hell of a lot of noise. Dean pulled up in front of them and turned off the car. It took a while for the engine to stop running. When it did, it stopped with a loud bang that made the turkeys dance around in alarm.

"Wow!" Dean opened the car door and got out. "They really do gobble."

"What? You doubted the word of the all mighty See-n-Say Barnyard?"

"Shut-up." The Vette's door screamed like a banshee (and the boys had actually heard the real thing once) when Dean pushed it closed. "And stop whining."

"I'm bleeding," Sam protested. "Blood means I'm allowed to whine."

"Whatever."

They went up to the nearest pen and stood there looking at the birds, some of which cocked their heads sideways and stared back at the boys with lidless black eyes. It was creepy enough for Sam to comment about the situation being "very Hitchcockian." Dean, only being familiar with _Psycho_, didn't get the reference.

"_The Birds_," Sam explained. "Haven't you ever seen _The Birds_?"

"No."

"Dude! That's some creepy shit."

"Will you stop cussing!" Dean wagged a finger at him. "You're fifteen. You're not old enough to cuss."

Sam considered this ridiculous in the extreme. "But I'm more than old enough to have a wet dream," he remarked coolly. "Dad said so.

"Yeah, but you didn't."

"Ha! No. You peed the bed."

Dean flushed. "Can we just get on with this!"

Sam shrugged. "All I'm sayin' is you can't say nuthin to me."

"It was _your _fault!"

"Not my fault you have no control over your bladder."

A fist went up. "Sam, so help me I'm gonna flatten you."

"Like you didn't drop the f-bomb when you were ten," Sam grumbled, and fell into line behind his brother as Dean turned and walked away toward the farmhouse.

(It must be noted that in the retelling of this story to his father, Sam left out key points such as his role in the bed-wetting prank, that it had been a prank in the first place, and the fact that he'd been cussing - among other "might piss off Dad" type things.)

As luck would have it, there was nobody home. The house and the barn were void of any human beings, only a swarm of barn cats who followed Dean around meowing until he scouted out a box of "Kitty Nibblets" and fed them. Cats always seemed to like Dean and avoid Sam like the plague. Sam would later discover it was no coincidence. Cats didn't care for anything remotely associated with demons, including humans tainted with demon blood, which belied their historical connection with witches.

"The only good cat is a dead cat," would be Ruby's assessment as both witch and demon.

After overhearing this comment Dean threatened to sic PETA on her and actually had the phone number dialed in before Sam caught him and made him stop.

That was later. For now Dean would have been on PETA's watch list himself as he was wandering around a barnyard contemplating turkicide. Deciding that it was the farmer's fault for leaving his flock unattended on Thanksgiving, Dean slipped inside one of the enclosures to pick himself a bird. Sam followed. They were immediately swarmed by curious turkeys who cocked their heads up at them, blinked blankly, and pecked at their shoes.

"These," Dean declared. "Are not smart birds."

With a little meanness Sam said, "Kindred spirits?"

Dean glared at him, annoyed at having his mental capacity compared to that of a pea-brained bird. "Sheesh, who pissed in your cornflakes?"

"Cornflakes! What cornflakes?" Sam retorted. "You didn't even let me eat breakfast this morning! If anybody pissed in my cornflakes it was you, Dean." He paused, and grinned. "We're back on the bladder control issue."

"You are a bitch, Sammy, did you know that?" Dean gestured toward the sea of turkeys stretched out before them. "Which one?"

"Which one what?"

"Which one are we taking home?"

"To eat?" Sam asked, suddenly squeamish about the whole thing. The turkeys you got in the grocery store didn't look back at you all innocent-like with little black beady eyes or waggle their waddles in a rather friendly sort of way.

"No, to keep as a pet - of course to eat, ya dufus!"

"Uh...that one?"

Sam pointed to a bird, probably the scrawniest bird in the pen. Dean gave him a disgusted look.

"That one?"

"Yeah."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah."

Shaking his head, Dean waded through the birds until he came to one particularly plump specimen hanging out near the food trough. "We're taking him."

It was easier said than done.

The trouble with Winchesters were that tragedy had given them all a tendency to take themselves very seriously, even when seriousness wasn't warranted – like when they were chasing large flightless birds around in a pen (with one of them saying, "here turkey, turkey, turkey..." in a very coaxing-type manner) Seriousness also rarely struck all of them at the same time, leading to some nasty bickering and the occasional pulling of hair, a situation in which Sam ended up with a disadvantage given Dean's penchant for the military look. On this occasion, however, they were both taking their turkey catching duty _very_ seriously. Where other boys might have been snickering, Sam and Dean were carefully calculating their strategy.

Had anyone been around to witness two erstwhile spook hunters gravely trying to catch a turkey who did not want to be caught, inside a large pen full of more turkeys who did not want to be caught, they would have laughed themselves silly. Military type strategy did not work on a bird with a brain the size of a peanut – it refused to cooperate with Sam and Dean's flanking maneuvers. Nor did it respond positively to the "run and tackle" method of turkey wrangling, which worked only slightly better. Sam actually got a hand wrapped around one of the bird's legs but was forced to let go when it pecked him in the forehead right between the eyes. He let out a shriek that brought brought instantaneous ridicule and laughter from his brother. Sam did not see anything funny about it.

"I could have been blinded! For life!"

"Crybaby," Dean admonished again a few minutes later as he made a snatch at the bird - and was promptly clawed across the back of the hand. "Ow!"

Sam ran by, sending turkeys flapping and gobbling in all directions. "Who's the crybaby?"

Dean dove after dinner again and missed. "Dammit!"

In the end, just prior to Dean pulling out a .45 and blowing the entire flock to kingdom come, a happy accident occurred. Whilst in pursuit of Big Fat Gobbler Number 42 (the number on its leg band) Sam tripped over another bird who had sat down in the middle of the pen and refused to move after the excitement of being pursued by two bumbling boys became too much for it to handle. Said happy accident was that when Sam tripped over #23 he fell on #42 and squashed it. The turkey flattened out with an odd noise that sounded like the marriage of a fart and a squawk, with a little gobble thrown in, and was finally incapacitated.

Sam was rather horrified that he'd squished a turkey. Dean was rather horrified that they were both covered in turkey crap and would stink up his car even more than it already stunk.

If one fast forwards ahead several hours to the hospital waiting room one would see John Winchester staring at his youngest with a rather odd expression that fell somewhere between shock and amusement. The muffled snorting noise was a result of his efforts not to burst into laughter because Sam was looking quite grim and miserable and his feelings would be hurt if his father laughed at him. Ultimately John had to excuse himself to go to the men's room to regain his composure.

When he returned he said, quite seriously, "Let me guess, it was just stunned?"

Sam's shoulders slumped. "How did you know?"

John rolled his eyes. "So you got it back to the apartment?"

"Yeah, and we were making mashed potatoes....well, not real mashed potatoes...."

Truth be told they were fighting over the mashed potatoes because the instructions on the box of Potato Nubs called for butter and milk. They had butter, but no milk. They had no milk because Dean had eaten all the cornflakes which, as established, Sam had none of that morning. While Sam sulked over being cheated out of breakfast, Dean decided that there might be enough milk left in the carton (which he had put back in the fridge instead of throwing away) to swish some water around in and at least get somewhat of a milky flavor into the potatoes.

This grossed Sam out in the extreme because he happened to know all three of the Winchesters had taken nips out of the carton. Somehow having cootied milk in cereal was much less gross than pouring the watered down remnants of milky backwash into one's mashed potatoes. Dean insisted it would be perfectly safe, "Su cootay ees mui cootay."

Obviously Dean had flunked Spanish.

"Just because we share genetic material doesn't mean I want your germs. I don't know where you've been," Sam grunted, concluding that the word "cootie" wouldn't translate into Spanish anyway.

"Dad's cooties are in there too."

"Yeah, and who knows where _he's_ been!"

"I wonder," Dean said, cocking his head (rather like a turkey) as he began to stir. "What would happen if we put holy water in here?"

Sam chuckled. "Holy mashed potatoes Batman!"

The production of dinner momentarily came to a stop as both boys found this screamingly funny. Sobriety ensued after they realized they might actually have to resort to adding liquid of some kind to the mix as what Dean was stirring had stiffened to the consistency of wet cement. Sam rummaged through the fridge and came up with a beer, which did not make it into the potatoes. It did, however, make it into his brother. The potatoes were momentarily abandoned.

While Sam shook the can of cranberry sauce in order to get the stubborn lump of gelatinous goop out onto a plate, Dean contemplated the turkey. It was lying in a large roasting pan next to the sink and a box of stuffing mix. Having never even cooked a turkey, let alone cooked a really, really, fresh turkey, he wasn't quite sure what to do with it. He presumed the first thing he needed to do was get the feathers off and the guts out, and he presumed this out loud so Sam could hear him.

"Well, pluck it and gut it," Sam said, and let out a yelp as the cranberry sauce suddenly decided to come out of the can in mid shake. With a loud belching sound it launched itself across the floor instead of onto the plate where it should have landed had luck been in Sam's court. Luck was NOT in Sam's court and the cranberry sauce was on the linoleum.

Luck wasn't in Dean's court either. In a perfect world he would have been able to coerce (force) Sam to do his dirty work and therefore avoid the actual "plucking and gutting" procedure, but Sam was busy chasing the can-shaped lump of cranberry sauce around the kitchen floor much like he'd chased the turkey around in the pen. Like the turkey, the cranberry sauce seemed peculiarly elusive and made him cuss.

As a result of his preoccupation with the cranberry sauce, Sam did not immediately witness the miraculous resurrection that occurred behind him. This resurrection was not of his brother, who at this time was very much alive and nowhere near Hell. (Although a few minutes later Dean might have insisted otherwise.) No, the miraculous resurrection was that of #42, who woke up in the roasting pan and leveled a beady-eyed gaze at Dean. Had the kid known then what he would come to know later, he would have likened the black eyed turkey to a demon and dumped holy water on it instead of in the mashed potatoes.

#42 was apparently not happy at having been squashed by a gawky teenager, carried home in a stinky car, and put to rest in a roasting pan. Therefore it took its angst out on the nearest available human. Said human happened to be Dean who had just reached for a few feathers in a reluctant start to the necessary plucking and gutting process. The pissed off turkey promptly opened its beak and impaled Dean's hand through the sensitive web of skin between his thumb and forefinger.

But that wasn't all.

#42 also began to channel Bruce Lee. Instead of flying fists, it let loose with flying feet and flapping wings, clawing and scratching its chosen victim quite viciously. Sam looked up from trying to dig the cranberry sauce from under the fridge with a broom handle to see his brother running around in circles with a flapping, clawing, squawking turkey stuck to his hand. In retrospect, as he relayed the tale to his father, Sam admitted he couldn't tell if it were Dean or #42 that was doing the squawking.

"SAM!"

"What?!?"

"GET IT OFFA ME! GET IT OFF!"

Sam promptly jumped up off the floor and swung the broom at the turkey – well, he was aiming at the turkey and probably would have hit it had Dean not slipped on the cranberry sauce that Sam had finally managed to work out from under the fridge. Instead of the turkey Sam hit the counter, busted the broom, and smashed the box of stuffing. Breadcrumbs exploded all over the kitchen.

"SAM!"

Dean let out another shriek as he scrambled backward trying to kick the turkey away from him. His efforts only made it clamp down harder on his hand and attempt to climb up his arm. Blood started to splatter all over the linoleum. Hauling himself up by a drawer handle, Dean yelled at Sam.

"Will you freakin' DO SOMETHING!"

Only he didn't say freakin'.

Now one must realize that although the boys were accustomed to dealing with scary monsters and the like, Sam was much less experienced than Dean and had no working knowledge of how barn animals functioned. He was also still just a kid and the first thing that popped into his head was the fear of rabies.

_Could birds get rabies? Bats did, but bats weren't birds. What if turkeys could get rabies? Holy crap! _

Completely panicked at the idea of Dean contracting the dreaded disease, foaming at the mouth and biting innocent children ala Ol' Yeller, Sam ran into the bedroom to where their father kept the shotgun.

The loaded shotgun.

The loaded shotgun that was loaded with real shells, not ghost-busting rock-salt shells.

You see where this is going don't you?

So did John.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" John held up a hand and stopped Sam in mid sentence. "Sam. Please tell me you didn't."

"Uhm..." Sam replied sheepishly. "Didn't what?"

"Shoot your brother."

Sam chewed his lip. "I was aiming at the turkey."

John put a hand over his eyes. "Oh, God."

In actuality Sam was a fairly decent aim. His first shot missed his brother and blew off one of the turkey's legs – the leg that landed in the garbage disposal. Horrified by this turn of events, Sam leveled the gun again (despite Dean's shrieks of protest) in an effort to put the poor animal out of its misery since he'd blown off its leg. Unfortunately the most incongruous thought entered his mind at the precise moment his finger bore down on the trigger. Said thought made him laugh and spoiled his aim.

He thought about pirates. Specifically he thought about turkey pirates with wooden legs and eye patches. They would say "aaurgh" instead of "gobble" and terrorize Lake Michigan in a rubber dinghy.

_That's _when he shot his brother.

"Pirates," John said flatly.

Sam nodded. "Yeah, you know. Jolly Roger and rum and yo, ho, ho, etcetera, etcetera. Only these were turkeys in a yellow rubber dinghy." He paused, pondering. "I don't think they had any rum. I'm not sure they had any paddles either."

John made a mental note to search Sam's bedroom for illicit drugs. "Oh-kaaayy. So you shot Dean."

"Yeah."

"Let me guess – in the backside?"

Shaking his head, Sam waylaid _that _cliche. "No. I hit him in the thigh." He gave his father a wry look. "It wasn't deep. Really, I just grazed him."

With a long-suffering sigh, John rubbed his forehead with one hand and gestured around the room with the other. "If it wasn't that bad why are we here?"

"Because Dean has a skull fracture."

John couldn't fathom this leap and Sam was forced to elaborate.

The second shot caused the turkey to let go of Dean's hand, and it staggered off on one leg into the living room while Dean staggered off on one leg around the kitchen, howling in pain. Sam put down the shotgun and came rushing up to offer his brother aid and prolific apologies. The two of them paused in the midst of a mess of blood, breadcrumbs, a few feathers, and cranberry sauce to assess the damage to Dean's drumstick.

That's when they discovered that Sam had very nearly performed sexual reassignment via buckshot.

He relayed this to John and then waited for his father's reaction. John was nonplussed. He still didn't understand how a near miss to the family jewels ended up with a skull fracture and a trip to the hospital.

"He fainted," Sam explained. "And brained himself on the edge of the sink."

After a cacophony of gobbles, shrieks, wing flapping and gunshots, Sam suddenly found himself standing in the middle of the virtually destroyed kitchen in complete silence. The turkey had come to roost on the sofa and sat there quietly bleeding into the upholstery. Dean was sprawled out on the floor with chunks of cranberry sauce in his hair, quietly bleeding onto the linoleum.

"Uh. Dean?"

When there was no reply, Sam hid the shotgun behind the fridge and sought out the first-aid kit, which he promptly discovered was in the trunk of the Impala, which John had somewhere off in Pennsylvania. Smelling salts unavailable, Sam did the next best thing, which was to fill a glass of water and dump it on his brother's face. Dean came to sputtering and moaning. At first Sam was relieved, but as he helped Dean to his feet and a little time progressed, he realized something wasn't quite connecting inside Dean's head.

A big tip off was the fact that in less than five minutes Sam was told Dean loved him at least seven times. This made Sam wonder if he hadn't s_ucceeded_ in neutering his brother. He realized very quickly the error in this train of thought as it was actually very ballsy to provide one's younger brother such blackmail fodder as hugging, hair ruffling, and woozy declarations of affection. Dean's wussification was simply a result of head trauma.

Due to the fact that Dean could barely stand, and one eye seemed to be focused in one direction and the other in another direction, Sam knew getting to the hospital would be problematic. Obviously Dean couldn't drive. It was too far to walk, and Sam thought calling 911 for an an ambulance would be overkill. They'd both been banged up pretty good in the past, so he wasn't too worried, but in those cases John had always been there to look after them. In the event something was seriously wrong with his brother, Sam didn't want to be held responsible.

There was also an ulterior motive for wanting to get Dean to the hospital – Sam was afraid that any minute the loving elder brother who told him he was cute and seemed to feel no pain would morph into pissed off elder brother with a leg full of buckshot. Pissed off brother would kill him. Putting a few nurses and a doctor or two between Dean and himself seemed to Sam like a very good idea. Therefore he rounded up Dean's keys and decided he – Sam – would do the driving.

There were several problems with this scenario, the first being the fact Sam didn't have a driver's license. Fortunately such legalities were overlooked in the Winchester household – Dean didn't have a driver's license either having never officially taken the driver's tests. His license, which did indeed say Dean Winchester at this point in time, was fake. According to his license he was twenty-one because in certain situations John needed him to be twenty-one – and such situations did not include buying alcohol and going to bars although Dean did both on a regular basis. Nobody really believed he was twenty-one. If anyone were to guess they might have said he was much younger, even younger than his true age. Sam told him it was because he was pretty, which resulted in Dean's attempt to grow a mustache, something they found memorable only because it turned out to be such a humiliating failure.

(In January of 2009 Dean turned thirty, and during the celebratory drinking of the shots he was mistaken for the younger brother by the barmaid. There followed much gloating on Dean's part. Sam demurred without argument, considering that if one factored in the freakishness of Hell's timeline, Dean was actually turning seventy. He always considered himself to be more mature than Dean anyway, and at the time of this event he was so stressed out he actually _felt_ much older physically.)

The second problem with the fifteen year old Sam driving to the hospital was that whereas he had – once or twice – driven the Impala under strict paternal supervision, he had never been behind the wheel of another car before. The Impala was an automatic. Dean's Vette was a stick, and about one third the size of the older Chevy. Furthermore Dean's mechanical skills were still slightly short of his father's. The Chevette was not "point and shoot." You couldn't just turn the key and drive away. It required a series of rather complicated adjustments before it would start, let alone actually_ go_ anywhere. One might liken it to trying to pilot a bumper car, or one of the twirling tea cups on a Disney amusement park ride.

It also stunk, which did not help matters.

It stank even more after the gear-grinding, neck-jerking, stomach-turning ride to the hospital. Dean would need a dump truck full of little cherry air fresheners to get rid of the smell he left in the Vette's floorboards. Sam would need a case of soap to clean out his mouth after all the expletives he'd uttered, and those were nothing compared to the curses leveled at them by other drivers. Dean was no help either, as his head was between his knees for nearly the whole trip. At a later date Sam would point out that the shade of green he was wearing by the time they arrived at the emergency room had been very complimentary.

"It brought out your eyes."

Unfortunately for Sam, he told this story in front of the girl Dean was trying to coerce into making out with him at the local look-out point. The girl declined. Dean swore revenge and got out the RIT dye again. The very next day every article of clothing in Sam's wardrobe was dyed a screamingly bright shade of hot pink.

Upon being confronted by his infuriated younger sib, Dean looked at him nonplussed. "Whatsamatta, Sammy? That color looks good on you. It brings out your pimples." And then issued what could have only be called an angelic smile which sent Sam bellowing for John's intervention.

("Not that angels actually smile very much," Dean might have amended later, after spending much time in the presence of Castiel's perpetual scowl. "Not at all, actually.")

But that's neither here nor there. Once they arrived at their destination Sam staggered out of the car – which he'd parked in a tow-away zone outside the emergency room - and proceeded to drag his still retching brother in to find a doctor. He anticipated having to wait, considering Dean was still conscious and his wounds were not bleeding that badly. In fact, the blow to his skull had not even produced any blood, just a goose-egg (or should it have been called a "turkey egg?") the size of Toledo on the back of his head.

Dean apparently wasn't content to wait, and solved the problem by announcing quite loudly to anyone who would listen that he'd been shot. He even claimed to be dying in a dramatic display designed to garner the sympathies of a pretty nursing student who stood nearby. It consisted of a great deal of moaning and sagging heavily onto Sam.

"Sammy? Sammy is that you? I'm so cold...."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean, come on...."

Dean clutched at Sam's shoulder and pretended to go limp. "I....I can't. I can't feel anything...." He pointed to the blood staining his jeans. "Will I lose my leg?"

Instantaneously the emergency room staff went into action with exclamations of, "A child's been shot!" which Dean found offensive considering at nineteen going on twenty he felt he qualified for AARP. He made a point to mention this to the ER staff – and the girl, who was already at least five years older than him. (He needn't have bothered, she wasn't interested, primarily because he smelled like cranberries and turkey shit. He was also still quite addle-pated, slurring his words like a drunk on a bender.)

"Hey! Hello, I'm not a child!"

They didn't listen, and before either of the brothers knew what was happening, Dean was whisked away by a group of people in white coats and green surgical scrubs. Sam was plunked down alone in a small room where he was summarily grilled by the hospital's Chief of Staff and a policeman regarding his role in the shooting.

"It was an accident," he said. "I wasn't aiming at him at all."

"What were you aiming at, son?"

"The turkey."

"So, this was a hunting accident?"

"Oh, no!" Sam said quickly, as he was quite flustered. Not only was he worried about Dean, but although he personally hadn't ever done anything illegal, the family tended to avoid persons of authority as a rule – unless of course they were pretending to _be_ persons of authority. In any case, he thought the cop meant _Hunting_, not hunting, and as the turkey was quite alive before Sam attempted to shoot it, and it just a turkey, not something like a wereturkey, he did not consider what happened a _Hunting_ accident. To clarify he added. "It was in the kitchen."

The doctor and the cop looked at each other. The doctor got up the courage to ask: "Was it alive?"

"Well, we thought it was dead, but then it jumped up and bit him."

"Him?"

"My brother. So I tried to shoot it and I missed." This was said quite morosely, as Sam anticipated having to spend more time practicing his aim the minute his father discovered he'd missed his target. (Sam anticipated correctly, as during the telling of this story, John did indeed decree a need for his youngest to work on improving his shooting skills.)

"Oooooh!" The persons of authority said in perfect harmony as understanding dawned.

"Where did you get the gun?" the cop asked sternly.

Sam squirmed. "A closet?"

"Is it registered? Who does it belong to?"

As he really, really did not want to have to answer those questions, Sam hastily began considering some options as to how he could get out of this rather sticky situation. He came up with three:

The Pity Play – in which he would cry and insist he'd killed Dean and get quite hysterical until they brought him a Coke and a donut and stopped asking him questions with a pat and a "there, there, it will be okay."

The Call the Parent Play – in which he'd hand over John's emergency number and let his father answer the tricky questions, despite the fact that receiving a phone call from the cops about having a gun hidden in his apartment would piss John off in the extreme

The Stubborn Brat Play – in which Sam would just clam up and not say another word about anything at all until they hauled him off to either jail or Children's Services, which would also piss John off in the extreme not to mention leave Dean alone in the hospital – not that Dean probably cared. Sam had stopped being cute after the second time Dean barfed in the car, and was completely forgotten – aside from being used as a prop - the very moment his brother caught sight of the pretty girl.

Ultimately Sam just answered the question.

"I dunno if it's registered. It was my Uncle Bobby's gun."

Now to the authorities, Sam's use of the word "was" was quite significant. They immediately jumped to the conclusion that the weapon had been left to the family by the unfortunate Uncle Bobby, obviously now deceased. Ironically this conclusion launched a somewhat amended version of Play #1 as they were moved to feel sorry for Sam and stopped asking him questions.

In truth, Sam's use of past-tense simply meant the gun had belonged to Uncle Bobby _at some point in time_, but did no longer due to the fact John had wrestled it away from him before Bobby could fill his ass full of buckshot. Since the next gun Bobby produced could have proved to be more lethal, John left the premises with much haste, taking the shotgun with him.

Bobby wouldn't see the gun again for years, not until after a demon threw a semi truck at the Impala and he was forced to hide the contents of its trunk from the authorities since the Winchesters were indisposed and couldn't do it themselves. He was quite pleased to have it back as he used it to kill any rats that happened to wander into the wrecking yard thinking they could make homes in the upholstery of his junkers.

(When Dean asked him why he was going to put a load of buckshot in John Winchester's backside in the first place, Bobby refused to say, and to date still hasn't. As for the shotgun - let's just say it's best to never, ever, let Sam get his hands on that particular weapon - and leave it at that.)

Back at the hospital Sam didn't get a donut, but he did get a Coke and a tuna sandwich with potato chips brought up from the cafeteria. This was much better than what Dean was getting, which was sedation due to the fact his misfiring synapses came back online completely just as they were strapping him down for an MRI to see a) what brain damage he might have incurred and b) to locate all the buckshot which had to be meticulously picked out of his thigh.

In his mad scramble to get away from the insane people who were trying to tie him up and stick him in a machine that looked suspiciously like a big round coffin, Dean put two technicians and a nurse in the hospital – as patients. This resulted in a doctor nailing him with a long needle and a syringe full of some unknown substance that almost immediately rendered him unconscious. Unbecomingly, the somewhat pissed off doctor waited until his patient came around again to work on removing the buckshot, (which luckily turned out to be "_bird_shot" in this case) after making sure that while he was still unconscious Dean was securely strapped down to an exam table. (Dean's memories of this event would grow sketchy over the years. If they were clearer he might have thought to wonder if Dr. Mann hadn't been possessed by Alastair at the time.)

Had Sam been anywhere near the room where the pellet removal procedure was being done he would have heard some _serious_ cursing,_ loud _cursing, and a couple very imaginative death threats, one of which included the shotgun in question and a trip down to proctology. The fact Dean knew what proctology even meant would have astounded him more than the threat itself. The fact Dean was cursing would have led him to wonder if he shouldn't let the cops take him away to Children's Services because surely Dean was going to murder him once they got home, or, at the very least, send _Sam _to the proctologist.

Fortunately Sam didn't find out about the MRI or the cursing until much later, so in the relating of his story to John he stopped at the tuna sandwich. He probably could have stopped prior to the tuna sandwich because John could still smell it on his breath, and thus didn't need to be told that Sam had recently ate a tuna sandwich.

"They had turkey, because it's Thanksgiving, but I wasn't real hungry for turkey," Sam explained.

"I'll bet," John mumbled, rubbing his eyes and trying to decide whether he should be laughing, crying, or thoroughly pissed off. "So where is your brother?"

Sam shrugged elaborately. "I dunno. They took him." The tone of Sam's voice was unnervingly similar to what one might say about an alien abduction, which was all the incentive John needed to get up and go looking for someone to tell him where to find his other son.

He decided it would be in everyone's best interest if he collected Dean and took both boys home – just long enough to pack up their few personal items and hit the road. He wasn't looking forward to having to explain the mess left in the apartment to his landlord, and was loathe to have to scrub turkey blood from the sofa. Making the boys clean it up would be a good way to punish them for – frankly – being complete idiots, but the bickering they'd do while accomplishing the task would drive him nuts. He sure as hell wasn't going to leave them alone again either – at least not for a good long while, and particularly on a holiday.

_We've stayed here in one place much too long anyway,_ he thought. _It's time to move on again._

Ordering Sam to "sit and stay" and ignoring the look of outrage this order produced, John headed toward the nurses station.

In the few (and far between) circumstances in which John Winchester opened up about his children to others, one would note that while he did not err entirely in his understanding of the boys, he did show a distinct lack of knowledge regarding the finer points of their personalities. This was due in large part to the fact the boys took great pains to hide those finer points from him. Thus, had he described Dean as being reserved, obedient, dedicated and responsible, Sam would have laughed his ass off. Likewise, had Dean used those same terms to describe Sam, John would have asked him who in the hell he was talking about.

John suspected there was a great deal of fabrication to be found in Sam's story, although he was having a hard time understanding why his notoriously sullen and obstinate younger son would go to such great lengths to celebrate Thanksgiving. He also failed to understand why Dean wouldn't have put a stop to such shenanigans, although if Sam wanted Thanksgiving, Dean would probably jump over the moon in order to give it to him. In a nutshell, there was just no way John could fathom Sam being so celebratory, nor Dean so irresponsible, but he certainly didn't get why Sam would make up such an elaborate, and _unsuccessful_, tale if it wasn't true.

As he pondered this quandary over and over in his head, John turned a corner and came upon the nurses station, where he discovered his "reserved" son Dean blithely chatting up a buxom blond nurse, who was completely enraptured by his large, sad eyes, and the titillating innuendo he was whispering in her ear. He had her hand in his, showing her just where Sam had shot him – or more precisely – showing her just what Sam had _missed. _

His reaction upon seeing his father come around the corner demonstrated quite clearly that a) Dean was a very athletic young man and b) he wasn't hurt nearly as bad as anyone may have thought. He sprang away from the nurse as if she had electrocuted him and was on the other side of the desk to meet his father in nothing short of a world record time for desk vaulting. The only indication of any injury was a wince when his feet touched down on the other side.

"Dad!" was the first word out of his mouth, followed immediately by, "It was all Sam's fault."

"But your responsibility," John said quietly.

This abrupt parental smack-down brought any attempt to weave a completely different explanation from Sam's to a screeching halt. Dean floundered for a moment though, until he realized he was cornered and was forced to give up and shut up. That immediately told John Sam hadn't been lying, and Dean was guilty as charged.

Thinking about the story Sam had told in this new light, it was all John could do not to laugh when he said, quite sternly, "Dean. Car. Now."

"Which one? I mean, didn't we...." Dean scratched his head. He was still a little fuzzy on the details of how exactly he landed in the hospital. "Isn't my....

John raised an eyebrow and asked, "Impounded because your brother parked it in a tow-away zone? Yes."

Dean groaned. "Maaan...."

"Dean. Car."

"Yessir."

They proceeded back to where Sam was waiting, Sam who looked very pleased to see Dean up and walking. Of course the pleased expression vanished as soon as he saw the dark look on his brother's face and heard the dreaded - "Car. Now." - from his father. They fell in behind John, whereupon he heard Sam hiss to Dean, "See what you did!"

"What _I _did? What do you meant what I did? You freakin' shot me!"

"Yeah, and who just _haaad _to have a real turkey?"

"How was I supposed to know the stupid birds are vicious killers?"

"Oh, so I saved your life from the killer turkey?"

"No. I had it under control. I didn't _need_ your help."

"Sure. You were screamin' like a girl, Dean."

"Was not."

"Was to."

"That's crap, Sam!"

"Are you calling me a liar?"

John shook his head as the argument continued all the way to the car. By the time they reached it the boys were no longer on speaking terms. Dean sat grouchy and silent in the shotgun seat, while Sam pouted in the back. Sam refused to get out of the car once they arrived at the apartment. John and Dean went in and gathered up the family's things, during which there was a very brief argument regarding the fate of the Vette. John refused to budge from the decision he'd made and there was nothing Dean could do about it. He knew the little Chevy could not take the abuse of being out on the open highway. It had barely made it to Upper Sandusky from their last stop in Illinois, lagging so far behind the Impala John had to stop several times to let him catch up. Thus it would remain impounded. Dean's wheels were officially gone.

A short time later they were on the road again, and again John could feel the hurt feelings radiating out from both kids. Additionally, Dean now mourned the loss of his smelly little car. It had, at least, been a car, and his all his own. It hadn't come from his father, and he had gotten it legally, something which could rarely be said of any of his possessions in the years to come. (Sam would later note that when Dean died, the only thing he owned that belonged solely to him was the pendant he wore around his neck. The car Sam kept simply because Dean would have wanted him to, but the pendant he kept because it actually meant something to him.)

John wasn't much for holidays, even less for sentimentality, but he remembered when times were different and such things did have meaning. He remembered his first Thanksgiving with Mary, who hadn't been much better at cooking a turkey than her boys, and suddenly felt the need to make some sort of an attempt to lighten the mood.

"You know," he said. "It's still Thanksgiving. There's a restaurant open off the next exit."

"I'm not hungry," Sam grumbled.

"I could eat," Dean replied quickly.

"You can always eat." Under his breath Sam added, "Pig."

He underestimated his brother's keen hearing. Dean turned around, eyes narrowed, fist raised, body poised to go over the back of his seat if Sam so much as rolled his eyes. "Shut up, Sam, and I seriously mean it."

"Hey!" John barked. "Enough! That's enough. Sam, shut your trap. Dean, sit your ass down." He waited until they had both obeyed before adding. "We're celebrating Thanksgiving, dammit, and that's that."

There was quiet, but only for a moment, before Sam spoke up again, softly, sadly.

"What do _we_ have to be thankful for?"

Nobody said anything. A mile, and then another ticked by with no answer to the question, only the sound of Sam sighing in the back seat. It was Dean who finally broke the silence.

"Family," he said quietly.

There was another long pause, and then Sam put in his two cents. "You know," he admitted. "Pumpkin pie sounds kinda good."

With a little quirk of a smile, John turned off onto the exit ramp. "Sure does," he replied. "Dean?"

Dean flashed a grin. "Ala mode." Then he sobered and added, quite seriously, "As long as I don't have to go milk any cows."

John laughed despite himself. "Unlikely."

"Good. I think I'm going to stay away from barnyard animals from now on."

"And that," Sam snorted. "Is _really_ something to be thankful for."


End file.
